


Gravity Falls, Oregon: A Layperson's Field Notes

by howtotrainyournana



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Drabbles, Fear, Gravity Falls - Freeform, Gravity Falls Oregon, Horror, Introspection, Mystery, honestly i'm not sure how to tag this since it's. not really about any of the characters so much as, itself. so like. it's strange little drabbles about the Things in Gravity Falls, more like just kind of a unnamed and faceless 'you' as the center of the drabbles, vague oc i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-13 11:52:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howtotrainyournana/pseuds/howtotrainyournana
Summary: A series of drabbles centered around Gravity Falls, Oregon, and the Things that may or may not be out there in the woods, Waiting.





	1. To begin with, an Observation

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little thing that I started up for the sole purpose of exploring some of the ideas of lore and creatures for Gravity Falls, as well as the town itself. Probably a little strange and esoteric and vague, but hopefully enjoyable. Cheers!  
> -Nana Graye

There are Things here, in the woods. That was a Fact, known and agreed upon and shuffled quietly under rugs and tucked in the corners of bookshelves and whispered quietly to loved ones in the dead of night for safety.

Things that go bump in the night. Things that hide in the shadows. Things that tip their hat politely to you when you pass them in the street on a Thursday afternoon, that smile politely and demurely and make the hair on every surface of your body stand on end for days.

There are Things here, and not all of them stay in the woods.


	2. Normality is Relative (and highly underrated)

One certain, undeniable Fact about living in Gravity Falls, Oregon, was that you were never assured of a normal day. Consistency was not really A Thing, here. Monday it was gnomes in your pantry, or maybe vanishing mice. Tuesday maybe a Multibear sighting, Wednesday a Hawktopus caught in the bat nets, Thursday a wishing fish caught on your line instead of a common lake trout, Friday the grapefruit sitting on your table gained sentience, or maybe it was just possessed by the spirit of a Particularly Vindictive Ghost with a terrible sense of humor.

The people living here were no more normal than the Things and really, was that a surprise to anyone? Sunday the postman showed up to deliver fourteen fresh baked apple and currant pies to you, because you helped Lazy Susan out by fixing some things at the diner and, apparently, the Good and Proper response to such help is to send _fourteen pies_ to the helper. By mail. On a Sunday.

You live two houses away from Susan.


	3. Someone lost, something Remembered

The Woods are Alive, you were told when you first got here.

It was a stranger who told you it, said the thing and then moved on without hesitation, moved on like the sentence wasn’t an aberration of the Flow of Conversation, and startlingly disturbing in its message and vehemence. It was a strange occurrence, one lost to the many many Strange Things that have happened since.

You remember it now, lost and wandering in a forest that has Eyes and Breathes, quietly and subtly and irrevocably _there._ You wonder about the stranger, and why you don’t remember their face but you can remember their eyes.

You think they were yellow.  


	4. Perhaps a Dream, as Dreams Would Be

There is a part of the woods that you like to go, now that you’ve been there and made it out alive twice. It’s a clearing lined with birch trees that turn gold in the fall. Something about the grove is calm and peaceful, like it’s the perfect place for a nap. And in the sunlight, at midafternoon, after a quiet picnic lunch by yourself, it is.

You dream of strange things, of fire and desolation and impossible bubbles, of color and joy and a deep heart-aching happiness that leaves you waking with damp eyes and a hollowness in your core.

You aren’t sure, but you think Something watches you through one of the eyes of the trees.


	5. Not sure which List to put this in

It is a commonly known Fact that when one thing goes wrong, two more Wrong Things are quickly to follow. The Law of Threes, or something similar, or maybe Murphy’s Law bound to it as well, as the three was often multiplied by itself and the Things That Could and Did Go Wrong simply piled up one after another. Whatever Law it might be, you wished it would simply ignore you for once. This was simply getting ridiculous.

All you wanted was to buy some eggs.

Somehow, though, the usual cashier clerk at the one (1) grocery store in this strange small town seemed intent on getting you to purchase half a dozen watermelons for the “After Summerween Supersale” and you were really too polite to turn them down. The excess of watermelon really wasn’t that big of a problem.

The problems was that apparently having _that many watermelons in one place_ attracted a being that called itself the Summerween Trickster. He seemed polite enough, wanting nothing more than to help you carve up the fruit into suitably horrifying faces with a candle inside, like some grotesque perversion of a jack-o-lantern. He made a rather fun conversation partner, horrifying existential implications of sentient candy aside.

This would have been fine, if the sweet smell of the frankly ridiculous amount of watermelon hadn’t attracted a small troupe of gnomes, who insisted on joining you and “helping” by eating all your watermelon, two (2) _entire shelves of jam_ , and the last of your eggs.

After chasing off the gnomes and finishing the jack-o-melons, the Trickster offered to make up for your trouble by pursuing the gnomish offenders and devouring them alive. You politely declined, saying that maybe you should just drop it and anyway, you were really meaning to pick up some eggs soon anyway and now you didn’t have an Excessive Amount of Watermelon to worry about. You waved goodbye to him and went to bed, thinking the whole thing was behind you.

Only to wake up to a neatly fenced in chicken coop in the corner of your yard, a dozen strange speckled chickens of varying sizes pecking happily at an assortment of grain and candy and raw meat, and a note in messy handwriting taped to your door that read “ _Apologies for yesterday, hope this makes up for the eggs we ate!_ ” and “ _P.S. if you ever have trouble again, just leave a jack-o-melon burning and I will come to your aid, new friend._ ”

You laughed, not sure if this should be added to the list of Things That Could and Have Gone Wrong or the list of While At First Horrifying and Traumatizing, Turned Out to be Educational and Maybe Somewhat Enjoyable.

You’d make a note of it and decide later.


	6. A Stone in the Hand (or something of the sort)

In a clearing in the woods somewhere in Oregon, there is a piece of stone that is Unnatural and Out of Place.

Now, there are plenty of stones in plenty of places that are neither Natural to that place nor belong in that Particular spot. An old brick building being reclaimed by a forest; half a ship’s hold worth of Italian marble sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic; river rock hewn from itself and carried downstream to line the banks of a street of people instead of fish.

This is not one of those stones.

This stone is Unnatural in that it Should Not Exist. It is not something originally of this world, nor was it ever supposed to be. Its Place in existence is not This Place, nor Any Place in this world or any Worlds like it. It is a holding place, a bookmark in a story that was never meant to be written or told or known or become. It is a reminder of the Unnatural Order of Things that Happened, and Maybe Would Happen, and Never Happened.

In a clearing in the woods somewhere in Oregon, there is a piece of stone that should not, by all rights and endeavors, Exist.


	7. Letter from 7!*$*(&#@~+

One day, on one of your daily walks around town, you see something peculiar. This is not an uncommon thing. Peculiar is the norm around here. Maybe Peculiar isn’t the right word for this, but you go with it anyway.

What is peculiar is that you never knew there was a mailbox in this part of the forest.

And there are no houses around.

And no road.

You are, in fact, in a highly undeveloped part of the forest and are well off any beaten path (for reasons you will think about at a Later Time).

More keen to investigate now that you are familiar with the workings of this town, you step up to it, look inside, and see that there is a single letter inside.

It is addressed to you, with a return address you cannot seem to comprehend.


	8. Seriously, is a plate of pancakes too much to ask

Someday, when you walk into Greasy’s Diner for breakfast, you will be able to order pancakes in peace. Today is not that day. Today, like many days before it, is Irrefutably One Of Those Days.

The jukebox is playing a loop of Johny Cash’s “Burning Ring of Fire” which was a nice bop the first and second time it played, a mildly ominous portent the third through sixth time it played, an aggravatingly irritating annoyance the seventh through twelfth time it played, and is now just the background music to the absolute nonsense trash fire your life has devolved into.

You have ordered breakfast _six times_. Each time your order comes out (a simple short stack with maple syrup), it is almost laughably wrong, in increasing absurdity. You’re not sure who’s cooking in the back, but you’re almost certain it is Not Susan. You have received, in order: an omelet filled with _only whole uncooked broccoli_ , a box of maple donuts from a neighboring establishment, a whole fried mackerel, a used left shoe, what you think might have been part of an old red journal, and, most inexplicable of all, a tiny but exact replica of the Pyramids of Giza.

Whoever this Not Susan is, they need to work on maintaining their cover as a cook for Mostly Human patrons.

The icing on the cake (or pie, in this case) was when you order dessert and the staff member serving you (a bored teen with red hair) simply says “It’s on the pyramid” and walks away. You contemplate protesting, but your attention is diverted by the sight of your plate hovering six inches off the table, dozens of tiny slices of pie decorating the outside of the tiny replica pyramids.

You opt out of staying and call for the check. A completely different staff member brings you a small, tightly rolled scroll with the words “Payment Due” scrawled on it. Baffled, you unfurl it and. You have no idea how you are supposed to pay. Where are you supposed to find _deer teeth_ and the bottled souls of your enemies? You don’t even have enemies!

Fortunately, help comes in the form of a distraught man toppling a table over and jumping up on the counter to rant about the Things in the Woods, the Things with Eyes. The New Staff Member moves away to deal with him. You take the opportunity to place a twenty on the table and slip out the door.

You figure the tip was good enough to cover everything.


	9. There was Something I forgot

You’re not sure, but you think things are disappearing.

Yesterday morning you noticed that a line of caulking was gone from underneath the lightswitch in the bathroom. It puzzled you because when you noticed it, it looked like it had been gone for years, a thin pinkish line of grime along the dark crevice.

But you are certain it was there the day before.

The next day, there are paint chips missing from the corners and edges of all the walls, but the floor is clean. Again, like the lightswitch in the bathroom, it looks like the paint was worn away with age. Naturally.

You repainted six months ago.

Two days later, the bulbs in every lamp in the house burn out, one by one. You take them in to the repair shop and are informed by the nice man at the counter that the bulbs are not the only things burned out. The lamps are old, antique, and the wiring has frayed beyond repair.

One of these lamps was a gift, brand-new, for your college dorm six years ago.

There used to be a set of picture frames hanging in the hallway, you’re certain of it, but they’re not there and there are no traces of pin holes, no fading of the paint.

The nice brass handles on all the kitchen cabinets (were they brass? Are you remembering correctly?) are suddenly worn cast iron.

Your keys no longer work. The locks are gone, but the door stays shut tightly all the same.

The window in your bedroom no longer opens. How could it? It is a single pane of glass, fixed in place. Why do you remember a shutter and screen and latch?

The stairs are wood now, old and worn. The blue carpet is gone. Was it blue?

You thought there was a door here. There are no doors here. There are no doors.

There is no house.

There is no you.

Is there?

You can’t seem to remember.


	10. Experience Technical Difficulties, Please Try Again . . . Later?

The clock ticks loudly at night.

You think that it’s just a product of the lower levels of ambient noise brought on by nighttime, but it’s not. It is, in fact, a product of the Weirdness of Gravity Falls.

You see, time here went a little funny a while ago. It was at the end of a summer a few years ago, or so you were told. It was before you moved here so you take it on faith as truth – and with all the strangeness you’ve seen from the town so far, you’re inclined to believe it.

So the clock ticks loudly at night, and sometimes it ticks backwards, and sometimes not at all.

Sometimes you get a sweeping sense of déjà vu when you look at the time and see the same numbers staring back at you that you are _certain_ were there five minutes ago. It is always at night that this happens, like the barriers of reality that naturally shift out of alignment with the onset of darkness sometimes slip up Just A Little Bit More and take the proper laws of time with them. You would think that the distortions of time – and the stopping of it on occasion – would mean a further decrease in the ambient noise. You would think it meant the clock would tick quieter, or not at all.

You would be wrong.

The clock ticks loudly at night.


End file.
